Does It Get Any Better than CDNLive! India?

I've
just returned from CDNLive! India in Bangalore, fired up with the huge crowd,
their avid interest in Cadence and our products, and both the quantity and the
quality of the user sessions. Of course I was impressed with CDNLive! here in
Silicon Valley too; I blogged about that
a couple of weeks ago. But the India show has at least as many attendees, plus
there was something extra in their level of enthusiasm. Even after the
sessions, entertainment, beverages and dinner were over, I still saw users and
Cadence employees chatting in groups all around.

Another
measure of the show's success is the intense competition for user
presentations. More than 140 abstracts were submitted, of which less than
one-third were accepted and presented. Judging by the high quality of the talks
I saw, surely some of those abstracts not selected were also worthy. We always
wish that we could present more sessions from all of you smart users out there,
but inevitably there are venue limitations. In addition, too many parallel
tracks can make it hard for attendees to decide which talks to see.

I
faced that dilemma myself at this event, since I presented both a verification
update in the Silicon Realization: Verification and FED track, and an overview
of System and SoC Realization in the corresponding track. There were
interesting verification-related user talks in both, so I ended up switching
back and forth between the two tracks all day. I jotted down notes on several
of these talks, so I'll take advantage of this post to share some of what I
heard and some of my observations.

As
is always the case at CDNLive! India, Incisive Formal Verifier (IFV) was well
represented, this time with three solid technical talks. Texas Instruments
discussed their use of IFV for verifying design-for-test (DFT) logic, a project
so successful that they eliminated 90% of their reliance on simulation for this
verification task. Freescale gave some concrete examples of design corner cases,
many related to low-power operation, which were thoroughly verified with IFV. Both
of these were the sort of specific, user-to-user talks that work best at these
shows.

The
third talk, from Nokia, summarized how they used IFV for several different formal
applications in the verification of a wireless modem design. I found this
session especially interesting and worth of follow-up, so I'll reserve the
details for a separate blog post.

A
talk by STMicroelectronics included my favorite quote of the whole show - "e
was an obvious choice for us" in reference to the team's expertise, the power
of the language, and the availability of high-quality verification IP (VIP). They
described how they create an e-based metric-driven verification (MDV)
environment that starts with abstract transaction-level modeling (TLM) of their
network-on-chip design. They are able to reuse the same environment at multiple
abstraction levels, including RTL, leveraging a vitally important dimension of
scalability.

Texas
Instruments also showed the power of the e language by focusing on another
dimension of scalability: moving from IP verification to full-chip SoC
verification. They build an IP-level testbench using Cadence's e
implementation of the Open Verification Methodology (OVM) library, and then are
able to scale up to the complete multi-language SoC verification environment.
They described their approach as "the way forward for verification strategy and
methodology of complex IPs and SoCs."

Other
verification sessions of interest included the use of Palladium XP for power
prediction, combined hardware-software MDV using Cadence Incisive Software
Extension (ISX), development of TLM-based verification IP, and verification of
SystemC TLM designs. I couldn't attend all of these talks, so in the interest
of keeping a crisp blog post I'll direct you to the program
for more details.

As
you can tell, I had a great time at CDNLive! India, followed by a couple of
productive days with our verification R&D teams in Noida. I don't make it
to India as often as I would like but I always enjoy myself and marvel at how
tremendously the country has changed just in the fifteen years since my first
visit. I've already given my management a head's-up that I'll be at the front
of the queue asking to return to the big show next year. I hope to see some of
you there!

Thank you for your informative blog!CDNLive represents a strong technical position of India globally,it marvelously commences with elements like enthusiasm among participants,intense competition among them etc,it really honored our country.